


The Family Business

by TheMissingMask



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: AU, Angst, Dirk Gently Whump, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), Project Icarus (Dirk Gently), The Brotzmans work for Blackwing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-06-17 14:01:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15462984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMissingMask/pseuds/TheMissingMask
Summary: Like their parents before them, Todd and Amanda get jobs with the oh-so-benevolent government organisation that is Blackwing.





	1. A good song without a chorus

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, three fics at a time is a good idea ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> This was inspired by the second episode of an ongoing BBC documentary on film tropes, which discussed in part the blurry line between law enforcement and criminal in heist movies. And then, subconscious worked, and I decided to consider what would happen if Todd and Dirk had met on either side of the proverbial fence in Blackwing.

———

Todd had grown up with stories of the Blackwing subjects. Of the terrible creatures who resided within that high-security government facility. How dangerous they were. How freakish. How inhuman. They were a threat to society and civilisation. To humanity itself. Allowed to roam free, they would surely pull the very universe apart at its seams, and leave the world a desolate and hostile place.

But, safely contained within the confines of a nondescript military base, his father told, they could be studied. The heroic scientists of that institute were going to uncover how the creatures worked, and how to control their abilities for the good of mankind. It was like the X-men gone wrong. The stuff of comics.

His father would tell him and his sister of the comatose man who could create things, of the invulnerable and crass assassin, of the real-life vampires who sounded nothing like those Todd had seen on Buffy.

As children, these accounts took the form of horror stories, the stuff of nightmares and campfire tales where they sat in Todd’s memory alongside werewolves and the sandman. The stories lingered with him even after he left home for college, and stayed with him when he dropped out of college to join a band. He remembered them, every now and again, during tours around rural America with his second, more successful, band. He might even have written a song or two inspired by the tales and monsters lurking therein. The stories stuck around to bring him comfort through the bouts of unemployment that followed his self-inflicted ruin of that band

When things got increasingly dire, and he had to move in with Amanda to share rent, they spent the first halloween in over a decade together. They told each other ghost stories as they had when they were children. Designed horrific acts to accompany the monsters their dad had implanted in their imaginations.

Todd’s favourite had always been the eastern European kid who spoke no English, and had been brought in with no less than 500 deaths in his ledger. Since their Dad never embellished his story with any mention of his powers, Todd had always loved to make them up himself. The kid could be whatever he wanted him to be, have as dark a past as Todd wished to engineer for him, and be as cunning and cruel and fearsome as he deigned appropriate.

Amanda always preferred the vampires when she was younger, but, as she told her brother that halloween, had abandoned them in favour of the shapeshifter ever since Twilight had rendered vampirism taboo in her eyes.

At 32, Todd lost his longest running job as a bellhop at some upmarket hotel, thanks to accidentally seeing the wrong high-profile politician with the wrong hooker. The same week, by some fucked up coincidence, Amanda got fired from TGI Fridays. Some guy had touched her ass, so she threw a milkshake - thick glass and all - in his face.

After two months of missed rent, the siblings were forced to move back in with their parents.

By second coincidence - and Todd wondered whether two coincidences in such quick succession technically counted as a third coincidence in itself - a letter arrived just as he was moving his stuff back up to his old room. His parents read it with interest that warped quickly into excitement and relief. They sat their children down in the living room for ‘a long overdue chat about their futures’.

Todd mentally catalogued the points of importance that emerged from his parents’ lecture:

Blackwing did actually exist  
As far as the public knew, Blackwing did _not_ exist  
Blackwing had been shut down due to a security breach 15 years ago that, alarmingly, resulted in the release of 35 subjects  
Both his parents had been employees at Blackwing, which explained their sudden fall in family income around the time Todd left home  
Blackwing was being reinstated under new leadership, and was rehiring former employees to save money on security briefings and training  
There were vacancies  
Their parents wanted them to apply for the vacancies and join ‘the family business’

Well, how could they say no? It would be more interesting than the alternatives available to an unqualified, moody, perpetually bored man and his equally unemployable sister.

After two definitely rigged interviews, Todd got a position as a soldier, and Amanda as a security officer. He wandered around bleak concrete halls all day with one gun in hand and two more holstered by his hips. She sat in a spinny chair eating gummy worms and watching mostly empty screens. They both agreed there were worse jobs.

After a year spent in this relatively mundane routine, Todd’s natural abilities at both shooting and hand-to-hand combat during training sessions got him noticed by Supervisor Adams. Shortly thereafter, he ended up on his first off-site assignment, a field test to see if he was ready for more responsibility and higher security clearance: accompany Mr Priest to retrieve one of the escapees from the initial breach.

Mr Priest was a total badass. As terrifying as he was cool, and definitely not someone Todd wanted to get on the wrong side of. It was said that he was beyond reprisals. Hurt, maim or kill another Blackwing employee or one of the subjects? Most people: instantly fired (and probably worse). Priest: no one saw a thing.

The nerves of impressing this man almost overbalanced the excitement bubbling through Todd at actually getting to see one of the subjects. What threw the balance in favour of excitement was the subject itself.

Project Icarus.

The same foreign kid responsible for such a ridiculous number of deaths for someone so young. Todd’s favourite character from the horror stories of his youth. Todd practically buzzed with anticipation, spending the drive to their destination imagining what sort of creature this guy would be, what form his powers would take, and how Priest would manage to take him down.

All the imaginings of his childhood were exaggerated, blown out of proportion, in his mind. Icarus would surely be either obscenely muscular, like a real life Hulk, or so powerful that he could kill a man with a little more than a look, like…well, Todd couldn’t think of an equivalent. Someone that strong would make a pretty shitty comic book character, he decided (instead of admitting his comic book knowledge might be a little limited thanks to too many hours spent with a guitar).

Standing at the entrance to the construction site into which Project Icarus had fled, Todd couldn’t help but feel out of place. Lined up next to the other soldiers in Priest’s team, he felt like part of a parody Star Wars sketch. Clad in black with a mask over his face, he stood at least a foot shorter than everyone else there, and half expected someone to sardonically ask ‘aren’t you a little short for a Blackwing soldier’. But still, the thrill of the impending hunt kept him standing proud as Priest delegated areas of the site between them and ordered their dispersal.

It was a Sunday, so the site was empty of its crew. Something Project Icarus had probably known when he chose that location to hide in. Something that worked against him now, since there was no one to deter the Blackwing operatives from using all reasonable force to bring him in.

Todd eagerly followed Priest’s directions and started to search his sector of the site, a dusty back corner filled with hollow concrete pipes, various small mountains of debris, and a crusty cement mixer. His feet crunched quietly on the dirt, barely audible over the sound of his cohorts searching more haphazardly elsewhere. He wondered if any of them had ever seen a cop show. A bull in a china shop would have been quieter and less likely to warn the subject of their approach.

At a first once over the area, Todd saw nothing out of the ordinary.

But, as he turned to move onto his next assigned sector, he caught sight of a shock of auburn hair in a corner formed by two piles of rubble. The thin, gangly man it belonged to was sat, knees to chest and wide eyed, staring up at him. Todd stared back.

This was surely just some homeless guy squatting in the site, petrified by the appearance of a man with three guns and a hidden face. But, he ought to be thorough. He took out a photo of Project Icarus they had been given, but which he had not even bothered with since the Icarus of his imaginings should be unmistakable. However, as he looked between the laminate sheet and the guy cowering before him, it was clear that, yes, this was Project Icarus.

Not what Todd had expected, but still, the monstrous reputation for danger preceded him. Icarus must be the ‘kill with little more than a look’ type.

Todd aimed his rifle in what he hoped was a threatening manoeuvre, heart beating staccato in his chest, ready for whatever supernatural attack this creature would launch at him.

“Please…” The subject whimpered, raising his hands in surrender, “Let me go?”

Todd faltered, “What?”

“What?” Icarus repeated.

“You can speak English?”

“Well I’m not bloody well speaking French!” Icarus replied snarkily, face switching sequentially from sarcastic, to offended to proud, “And, I might add, my English is considerably better than whatever bastardised version you people speak.”

“Us people…”

Icarus’ features morphed again, worried…no. Curious. Intrigued. His lips pursed just slightly, brows coming together, eyes glinting in the afternoon sun.

He cocked his head to the side, “You’re new.”

“What?”

“What?” Icarus repeated again, eyes wide and almost innocent. Another transformation. This was dizzying.

Todd frowned, “You can’t just what back at my what.”

“Well, clearly I can! I mean, I just did. Twice, in fact.” And the snark again.

“What do you mean I’m new?”

“You’re talking to me.” Icarus said plainly, “Give it a couple more months. You’ll soon understand the perils of conversing with such creatures as we are. God forbid our brief exchange of words beguiles you into believing that we, too, are of the human persuasion and might even have-“

“Svlad Cjelli.”

Todd jumped at Priest’s sudden appearance behind him. When he looked back at the subject, all colour had drained from his already pale skin, and his face betrayed nothing but terror.

“What a pleasure it is to see you again,” The man sauntered straight past Todd and loomed over the trembling form, “You’ve been givin’ us quite the run around, darlin’.”

The subject remained silent. His eyes, that had seemed so bright and expressive became downcast and empty as he allowed himself to be pulled to his feet and led towards the waiting van. Todd piled in the back of the vehicle with the others and somehow ended up sat opposite the subject. Icarus didn’t say a word, didn’t look up from his feet, and certainly didn’t fight.

Project Icarus was like a good song without a chorus.

Ultimately disappointing.

———


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally updating. Thank you very much for the comments, you lovely people! :) In other news, it is raining! England feels like England again! XD
> 
> \---

Amanda watched with her usual moderate disinterest as Blackwing operatives wandered into and out of the array of screens before her. Like the other two walls of LCDs lining the small surveillance office, each of the nine screens displayed feeds from four separate cameras, giving her a total of 108 possible views on the facility: 36 in its corridors and hallways, 36 covering its perimeter, and 36 looking inside the rooms of the subjects themselves, each tailored to contain its own brand of freak.

Only ten of these latter had occupants when she had started work in the Blackwing surveillance department. Now there were fifteen, which was a decrease by two on the number of last month, courtesy of two unfortunate accidents during failed escape attempts. No one talked about that.

Her favourite on-duty pastime, and she’d been through several in an attempt to dispel the boredom that came with with watching the monotonous daily workings of Blackwing, had become watching the pale mists rise from the four deep pits in Incubus’ room.

The mists seemed to writhe and take form in an almost imperceptibly directed manner.  Or, at least, Amanda's caffeine-overloaded mind perceived them to do so.  As they swirled and formed wreaths around the concrete and iron structures of the room, it seemed as if a loosely choreographed dance were laid out before her.  Shapes that made some sense formed amidst the clouds of precipitation, but whenever she made effort to name or even describe any of them, she would found herself quite incapable.

All she knew for certain was that, what had, three months ago, been but a whitish floating haze had become something of abstract significance, like the intangible memory of a dream.

With reluctance she forced herself to turn away from her favoured screen and offer some attention to the various others before her.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  Nothing to note.  Marzanna doodling circles with crayons on large sheets of paper in her room, Moloch in his usual slumber…

A movement to the left caught her attention.  She spun 420 degrees on her chair to face it, pony tail whipping in her wake.

Second row up and third in from the right, the four parts of the screen showed the arrival of one of their black SWAT vans.  It parked outside one of the doors and a stream of nondescript black-clad Blackwing agents piled out in some semblance of military order.  All were well-built men, soldier types, who would look threatening even without the uniform and small armoury about their persons.  All except for her brother.  Amanda was pretty sure he alone halved the mean height of the unit.  She snorted in amusement to herself and took a gulp of Monster Energy from the half-drunk can on her desk.

Last out of the van was Mr Priest.  All stocky muscle, black torn clothes, and an uncanny resemblance to G. I. Joe gone rogue.  He dragged with him a tall man with auburn hair and the general demeanour of one who had resigned himself to his fate.

While the generic Blackwing cannon fodder made their way contentedly through one door, already breaking military order by chatting and clapping each other on the shoulder in manly demonstrations of affection, Priest headed gleefully with his charge to another entrance.  Both sets of men disappeared from view and she turned back to her Incubus screen, its mists becoming tumultuous and erratic, almost violent.

She surveyed the hallway screens. Nothing but the usual patrols doing their rounds, and for a brief moment she saw Todd and his unit as they headed to the changing room, which thankfully was camera-free.

At some point, Priest appeared with the subject, passing across three different screens before disappearing into a ‘black room’, one of the many that her security clearance didn’t permit her to see inside. Only Supervisor Adams had clearance for the feeds from those rooms. Neither Priest or the subject exited within the two hours remaining of her shift. It was a shame to miss out on something interesting happening for once, but somehow no matter how bored she might have been, something told her she didn’t really want to be privy to whatever happened in that room.

———

Amanda almost felt guilty handing over watch to the guy with the chin-strap beard at 18:00. The sudden wash of freedom upon leaving that dull concrete base every afternoon was euphoric. She delighted in it, and something about that left a sickly feeling in her stomach and a hazy ache in her head.

It was Todd’s turn to drive, so as she sat in the passenger seat and he started out of the parking lot, she swiped absently left, left, left on an endless stream of men and women appearing on her Tinder. Why in the hell she had let anyone convince her to get that ridiculous app was a wonder, but at least it gave her something to do with her hands and a cover behind which to feign disinterest.

“How was the mission?” She asked offhandedly as they pulled away from the guarded entrance gate. She flicked her eyes up just in time to see her brother’s poorly suppressed smile before it was hidden behind a nonchalant shrug.

“Alright, you know, cool.”

“Saw you guys brought in another subject? Pretty big stuff for your first mission.” She swiped left again, leaning her back against the window and propping her feet against the gear box, “Parents’ll be impressed.”

“Yeah, well…” Todd shrugged again, and Amanda couldn’t help but smile at the way his eyes lit up, “It was Project Icarus. I actually kinda found him, hiding out.”

“Yeah?” She thought back to the gangly man in Priest’s grasp, “He’s not what I expected from the reports. Doesn’t look like much of a badass.”

Todd snorted, “ _No one_ looks like a badass next to Priest.”

Amanda kicked him in the arm, “Alright, fanboy, keep your pants on.”

“Hey! I’m not a fanboy, he’s just, you know…” Todd blushed and sped the car up a little, drawing a loud laugh from his sister.

“Yeah, right. Whatever you say.” She smiled evilly, “When’s your next date with him then?”

Todd glared, blush still colouring his cheeks an entertaining shade of pink, “We have another retrieval mission tomorrow.”

“Who?” Amanda’s interest in Todd’s crush was immediately overtaken by her interest in the next subject who might grace her screens.

“Lamia.”

The shapeshifter, Amanda remembered from the files. She belonged on screen 40 in the bizarrely empty room.

While their parents praised Todd for his successful mission that evening, and he regaled them with its particulars, Amanda stared at the formless clouds passing through the darkening sky and mused over the fate of Project Lamia. Her photo in the file was of a young, dark-haired girl with sparkling eyes. The subject who was manoeuvred in a daze into the empty room the following afternoon was a woman now, still with the same dark hair, but a more distant look about her. She stood for a long time in the middle of the room, staring into nothing, and then in an instant was there no more. She had transformed in a moment to a yellow leather jacket that lay motionless upon the floor. One heap of colour drowned out by the bleak white surrounds.

So, now Amanda had sixteen subjects to observe. When she turned to watch the Incubus screen, she found the tumultuous mists curling and writhing from the pits were even more energetic and lively than yesterday. They darted a sharp staccato dance through the air, becoming thicker and faster when the door to the room opened and Icarus was led in by Friedkin.

Amanda leant forward in interest. It was rare to see the sergeant on the shop floor, so to speak, so often was he relegated to the armoury and gym. The blond man shoved Icarus onto the barred platform that stood over the pits and held him there with a gun aimed at his chest. Backing away but never looking from the subject, he went to press a button on the wall behind them. She switched audio channels to that room, catching a loud whirring sound as some mechanism began to pull four metal caskets from the pits.

Friedkin lowered his gun and promptly looked away.

Amanda soon understood why.

Before the contraption had even finished hauling them up, wisps of blue light joined the swirling mist, drawing from Icarus into Incubus. The former whimpered and made an aborted movement back, but unable to move any further instead curled in on himself. The strange blue light became so thick it was almost opaque, dominating the mists as it cut through them. Amanda couldn’t decide whether the desperate, breathless gulping from Incubus or the whimpering of Icarus were worse. But soon enough, Icarus’ knees were buckling and he collapsed unmoving to the floor. She was then accosted by only one terrible sound. It was that of something drowning suddenly presented with air, of a parched man given water. Yet insatiable, as if there just was not enough air, enough water.

This was the first time Amanda had seen the four Incubus subjects properly. She hadn’t been on duty when they were recaptured. She simply left one evening, and the following morning saw one more screen of her wall occupied anew. She peered at the top right feed on the screen, at the blond subject. His eyes flicked towards the camera, seemingly locking with hers. The sensation that drew within her was an intensification of whatever she felt when following the progress of the swirls and leaps of their white mist. She might have been unnerved, but for the ever so slight smile he offered. It was meant for her. Amanda knew this. She _felt_ it.

They didn’t break the disjointed eye contact until Friedkin was finally lowering the subjects back down. As he did so, the mist transformed again into calm whorls, broken in places by more clear shapes. Coherent patterns, as if it was talking to her again. The idea was ridiculous, but she chose to entertain that fancy rather than watch as Friedkin carried Icarus out. It was remarkable how mist could make better conversation than half the people she had the displeasure of knowing.

**Author's Note:**

> I realise that there are plenty of great songs that don't have a chorus. This is Todd's opinion, not mine! Although, there are some chorus-less songs that build up so much to one and then it just doesn't happen, and that sort of leave an empty sensation that is really rather troubling. :/


End file.
